In order that the reader may have in his mind’s eye a picture of the outfit, including the members of the party, not omitting the dog, I will try to paint a word-picture of it.
Imagine that you see coming out of a side street into Peco Street, a team of medium-sized horses wearing a set of heavy tin-bespangled harness, attached to a regulation wide-tread ranch wagon with canvas top, with a water barrel on each side. A bale of alfalfa hay is seen on the carrier behind, and a lantern swings from one of the bows. Inside are two spring seats, the second being occupied by a large, brown, yellow-eyed dog, and the front seat by two very ordinary-looking individuals of uncertain age. Following the wagon is a tall slim man on a bay mare. There you have a mental picture of our outfit as seen by the inhabitants of Los Angeles that May morning as we started on our long journey.
The two men on the front seat were Robert Lancaster and the writer; the tall man on the bay mare was Doctor Lancaster. We had stored inside the wagon our provisions, bedding, tools, tent, cots, horse feed, etc. We also carried an extra single-tree and clevis, together with a single harness for use in case it should become necessary to use all three horses.
Our exit was anything but spectacular. We said good-bye to three or four friends, feeling ourselves somewhat conspicuous on account of our brand-new appearance, but were soon lost in the crowd of a large city, and forgot we were on anything but a morning’s drive in a rather slow coach through a busy town, until we found ourselves well out in the country, with an appetite for dinner.
We were taking what is called the “Lower Road,” from Los Angeles to San Bernardino, and had arrived at a grove of eucalyptus, affording shade and a place to tie and feed the horses, so we pulled out to the side of the road and made our first stop. Here we found a place to water the horses, and after eating a cold lunch and giving the horses plenty of time to eat, we interviewed our neighbors--a man and his wife and boy--camped near us, who had come from the north by wagon and were going down into Mexico. They had a team of horses and a saddle pony. They were just seeing the country, and had camped here near Los Angeles to rest up their stock and see the town. They seemed to have done nothing else all their lives but drive about, always looking for a good place to locate, but never finding one to their satisfaction; so they only stopped here and there to earn enough money to carry them to the next place.